World Juniors R3+4: Harsha Bharathakoti's magnificient day!

by Sagar Shah - 08/09/2018

India has a strong contingent at the World Junior 2018. We have four GMs representing our country - GM Karthikeyan Murali, Aravindh Chithambaram, Karthik Venkatraman and Abhimanyu Puranik. However, the star of the tournament so far has been IM Harsha Bharathakoti who has scored four points in four rounds and is clearly on track to achieving his GM title. Harsha already has three GM norms already and now needs just 10 Elo points to become 56th GM of India. On the third day of the World Juniors, which was a double round day, Harsha showed some high class chess to beat to strong GMs - Alan Pichot and S.L. Narayanan. In this report we have both the games lightly annotated as well as an interview with Harsha. You will also find the link to follow the live games, along with live commentary, where Harsha takes on Maghsoodloo in round five.

Harsha Bharathakoti started the tournament with a rating of 2474 and three GM norms. He has already gained 16 Elo points and is on 2490, just 10 points away from GM title.

Harsha Bharathakoti vs Alan Pichot

Harsha was under grave time pressure, but he managed to keep his cool and came out on top by making some amazingly accurate moves towards the end.

Harsha speaks to ChessBase India after his victory

S.L. Narayanan vs Harsha Bharathakoti

In the second round of the day S.L. Narayanan was in an agressive mood. He sacrificed quite a bit of material and the game was quite interesting. But after a point he blundered and Harsha took home the full point.

Karthikeyan and Karthik played in the third round against each other and drew their game

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